This reassessment of Chateaubriand s literary and political achievements, offered as an intellectual biography of the writer, is centred on the concept of change and Chateaubriand s emotional suspicion of change, arising both from mistrust of his own inconstancy and from the personal and collective suffering of the French Revolution. His aversion to change spread beyond politics to religion and literature, but conflicted with his intellectual fascination with historic change in all three areas. The paradox of his fluctuating attitude to change allows a challenge to traditional views of...